Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: Night Pilgrims

With 20-odd books in the Saint Germain series, by now one knows what to expect - impeccable historical detail surrounding yet another of the ancient vampire's travels and adventures. I love these books, and Night Pilgrims delivers all of the trademarks of Yarbro's successful blend of the historical and the supernatural.

It's 1225, not long after the Fifth Crusade, and Saint Germain is back in Egypt, living as a secular guest in a Coptic monastery while attempting to minister to the medical needs of the community's elder. Political developments, both internal to the monastery (the ambitious monk who seeks to become the community leader and is suspicious of Saint Germain's true nature and intentions) and external (unrest stemming from the advance of Ghenghis Khan) make it necessary for the Count to leave his place of refuge. Fortunately, a party of European Christian pilgrims require a guide in their journey south along the Nile to sacred sites in Ethiopia. The Count, a well-travelled polyglot with great skill as a healer, is the perfect choice.

The novel details the world of medieval Egypt through which the group of pilgrims pass with painstaking detail, and I must admit that this for me is one of the greatest draws of the Saint Germain novels. The other draw is the idea of Saint Germain, the millennias-old being who has seen the rise and fall of civilisations, the best and worst that humans can contrive - and still moves among them with pity and compassion. The vampire healer. The peacemaker (when possible) who needs blood to survive. The eternal contradiction.

Jennifer McMahon: Island of Lost Girls

I can't remember when or why I picked this up, but I was browsing my to-be-read pile one day and saw it there, became curious, and started reading. And kept on reading until it was finished. So whatever the reason was, it was a good one.

Set in a small Vermont town, the book explores tangled relationships between the members of two families and secrets kept hidden for years - all this against the backdrop of a search for a missing school girl. It manages the task of following multiple mysterious disappearances in different times without making any of the paths toward discovery seem over-complicated or contrived.

Wikipedia tells me she has written several other novels, including one that was nominated for a Lambda award. Crowded as my TBR pile is, I think I will have to find a copy and add it to that pile.

Rereading for fun and profit

Well, maybe not for profit. But there are a good many books that I like to reread for fun. They are comfortable old friends, and depending on my mood, I can pick sonething that I know is absolutely going to hit whatever spot needs hitting.

When I'm sick and depressed and cranky - which is a state that hsppens every once in a whike to most peoole with chronic illness - one of the authors I turn to for sonething that will soothe but not challenge me is Mercedes Lackey, and her Valdemar books in particular. They are full of spunky women (and a few men - Vanyel being one of my favourites) who face all sorts of obstacles, but always manage to get through whatever is blocking their way, and get the job done. That lifts my spirits.

I had one of those spells earlier this year, and while I was caught in the middle of it. I read a bunch of Mercedes Lackey books:

Magic's Pawn
Magic's Promise
Magic's Price

Winds of Fate
Winds of Change
Winds of Fury

Storm Warning
Storm Rising
Storm Breaking

Judith Merril: Shadow on the Hearth

One of the few 1950s era novels dealing with the immediate consequences of nuclear war that was written by a woman and from the perspective of a female protagonist.

Reading a '50s novel that's written from the perspective of an ordinary '50s suburban housewife is a very strange thing in 2014. So much has changed, especially for women. And yet so much is familiar. Many developments in the novel that come in the wake of a surprise attack on American soil, such as the persecution of immigrants who've been in the country for years, eerily parallels recent events in the US.

It was difficult to read about the struggles of women who had so little practical knowledge and experience of anything outside home and family to make sense of what's happening to them - even though I'm old enough to remember when that was true for many middle class married women. And yet the subtle pervasiveness of sexual threat, both from strangers in lawless and desperate times, and from the men placed in charge of a frightened and helpless population, was unhappily too familiar still. Merril captures the protagonist's transition from confused and helpless suburban wife and mother to a survivor with the strength to deal with privation and illness with skill.

C. L. Moore and Leigh Brackett also wrote dystopic/post-apocalyptic novels in the 50s (Doomsday Morning and The Long Tomorrow) and I don't remember ever reading either one. I think I might hunt them down and check them out. Andre Norton also wrote several post-apocalyptic novels - Star Man's Son is the one that leaps immediately to mind but I think there were othets as well. Might be interesting to re-read those as well.

We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology

This anthology, edited by Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad, of speculative fiction stories written from a post-colonial perspective is well worth reading, if at times acutely uncomfortable for the member of a colonising culture who is thoughtfully reading them.

There is a great deal of unquestioned colonialist thinking in science fiction. The literature of future space exploration, particularly as written by British and American writers, is very much a literature of humans (usually male, usually white) expanding throughout first the solar system, then the galaxy, sometimes throughout the universe, taking charge of planets that are either uninhabited, or peopled with Others either too primitive or too decadent to resist, or otherwise unfit to retain soveriegnty. It's a literature of colonisation and exploitation, occasionally leavened by the insights contained in such critiques of this vision as Le Guin's The Word for World Is Forest.

These stories make us look at this narrative from the other side, for the perspective of the colonised snd exploited and othered. As Aliette de Bodard writes in her Preface:

They are the voices of the invaded; of the colonized; of the erased and the oppressed; of those whom others would make into aliens and blithely ignore or conquer or enlighten.

A brief concluding essay by Ekaterina Sedia summarises the recurrent themes of these stories far better than I could. Speaking to the importance and meaning of narratives such as those collected in this volume, she writes:

We find ourselves rebelling against the lies and the dominant narratives fed into our collective psyche, Clockwork Orange-style, by Hollywood’s dream factory—a truly terrifying notion, if you think about it for a bit. We find ourselves looking for ways to escape, but realizing, time and time again, that the post-colonial world is still rife with colonial injustice and oppression. And yet, slowly, slowly, we are finding voices to tell our stories, to reclaim what has been lost of history. These broken, half-forgotten histories and dreams will never be restored to their original form, and part of living in the post-colonial world is making peace with that. Because we can still create the future, and try to hope that it will be treated better than our past. The writers in this book are taking a step in that direction—because the frontier that they see is one not in space but in time, a time when all voices are heard and all stories are listened to, when no history is erased, no matter how small or inconvenient. We see a different frontier—and I hope that this book let you glimpse it as well.

Nicci French: the Frieda Klein murder mysteries

Nicci French is the pen name of British duo Nicci Gerrard and Sean French; together, they have written four mystery novels featuring psychiatrist Frieda Klein, as well as a number of stand-alone thrillers. Being a sucker for mystery/thrillers featuring female protagonists, and having a certain ibterest in the psychology of crime, this seemed a likely series to feed my addiction. And so it was - I ended up reading the three volumes I was able to acquire in two days.

I love the complexity of this series, the way the protagonist's personal and professional lives are changed by the circumstances that keep drawing her into the lives of people committing and dealing with the aftermath of violent crimes - as police, as perpetrators, as victims, as family and friends of all three. These are more than just murder mysteries. Can't wait to find an ebook of number four in the series.


Blue Monday

First in this series of mystery novels, I found it quite an enjoyable ride. At first I was put off by the rather choppy writing stule, but before long the story and the characters got to me wnd pulled me in, particularly the lead character, who I found myself liking quite a lot.

In this first novel, Klein begins to suspect that a middle-aged patient she is yreating for panic attacks is connected with two child abductions 22 years apart. She brings her cincerns to the attention of the investigaing detective, DCI Malcolm Karlsson, who is at first reluctant to work with her but conrs to appreciate the insights she brings to the case. And while I won't spoil the ending, I have to say that the last key reveal sent shivers down my spine. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. I liked that.



Tuesday's Gone

A visiting social worker on her rounds finds a woman on her case list calmly feeding tea and biscuits to a corpse, the case falls to DCI Karlsson, and the curious psychological aspects of the case cause him to turn to Frieda Klein for insight. Meanwhile, Klein is facing questions about her professionalism, she's facing hostile media attention over her involvement in another case, her niece Chloe is becoming too much for Klein's sister to deal with - and she has the strage feeling that she is being stalked. Another compelling read.



Waiting for Wednesday

A middle-aged mother of three is found savagely murdered in her home. DCI Karlsson would like to bring in Frieda Klein to consult, but the department insists that instead he work with one of Klein's professional rivals, Hal Bradshaw - who turns out to be a pompous ass who goes for the quick and easy explanations. Karlsson soon enough discovers that the victim had secrets which point in quite a different direction than Bradshaw's pufferies.

Klein is still dealing with the fallout from a case she worked on where an apparently innocent man was imprisoned, to say nothing of recovering from an assault suffered the last time she worked on a case with Karlsson. Another complex mystery that moves on multiple fronts and holds onr fascinated through to the end.

Elizabeth Moon: Crown of Renewal

Moon's "Paksworld" fantasy novels have been among my favourites ever since I first read Sheepfarmer's Daughter. When she returned to this world for the Paladin's Legacy series, of which this is the last volume, I was so excited, I couod hardly wait the long months between the announcement that she had done so, and the publication of the first book of the series.

The series, and particularly this last installment, have lived up to my expectations. Loose ends, apparent inconsistencies and questions from all the previous books have been resolved, and the ending leaves one feeling that all is going to be well in the lands of Aare and Aarenis.

And.... Dorrin Verrekai was one of my best loved characters, next to Paks herself - and her destiny left my eyes wet with joy for the character.

All I could wish is that Moon finds another inspiration to bring her back to the world of Paksenarrion.